07/08/2011

About the Author

I'm the guy that which does Love and Capes.

14 Comments

Zacula
July 8, 2011 at 5:55 am -

To be fair, nobody is really certain why this happens. It’s the same reason that, in Superman Returns, the bad guy uses all the ammunition in a fighter-jet sized gatling gun on Superman unsuccessfully, and THEN pulls out a handgun and shoots him. It’s like smacking a rock with your fists and then throwing a pebble at it.

ImNotHere
July 8, 2011 at 7:23 am -

They throw it more out of frustration than anything else (although on “Barnie Miller” they had a story where a cop in a bullet-proof vest was killed by a thrown gun to the temple).

In superman Returns, after finding random high-powered shots to the body didn’t work, the gunman tried a single accurate shot to the most vulnerable place he could find. Given that, at that point, he had nothing to lose, it was worth ‘a shot’ (sorry… bad pun).

batgirl84
July 8, 2011 at 9:21 am -

I think they do it for the lolz. They figure eh I’m going down but at least I’ll go down funny.

R.J.C.
July 8, 2011 at 9:51 am -

I guess some mysteries can never be explained……..

Simon
January 17, 2012 at 7:00 am -

What is more confusing is how, in some shows, the hero will dodge the thrown gun after standing defiantly before the bullets.

John
April 17, 2012 at 9:24 pm -

In the old shows the gunfire would be special effects while the gun was an actual prop. If the hero got hit by one it would actually hurt.

John Tannius
April 18, 2012 at 11:30 pm -

I just figured that while he was bulletproof his real weakness was the guns themselves. That and kryptonite.

Withdrawn
April 26, 2012 at 11:00 am -

And now I’m having flashbacks to the Super Smash Bros. Series of videogames, where throwing your gun is actually a completely valid tactic, and in some cases better than actually firing it.

eric bloedow
May 24, 2012 at 10:23 pm -

i just remembered: the golden-age Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was vulnerable to WOOD-so a crook throwing a gun with a wooden stock at him would actually be more effective than shooting it…

Tetsuhara
December 15, 2013 at 2:31 am -

I believe it’s more of an homage to the old Superman TV series. The bad guys would always empty their guns shooting at Superman, and then they would throw the guns at him. But because of the tech of the time, they would show show a shot of Superman standing there and animated bullets ‘bouncing’ off him, but when they cut back to the scene, they’d show him ducking the thrown gun or slapping it away with his hand or something. It made it seem like the thrown gun was way more effective then the bullets.

Jesse
December 19, 2013 at 5:01 pm -

Well, speaking as someone who has a problem knowing when to give up, even if you’re going down, you go down fighting with your last breath, with the last drop of blood in your body. Out of bullets, and they just bounced off anyway? Throw the gun. Thrown gun makes him giggle? You draw a knife. Knife breaks? You break your fist on his face, then your teeth, and then knock yourself out trying to break his nose with a head butt.